The pen at Chen Fan's fingertips made one last turn and came to a steady stop between his fingers.
But once he settled on his course, his mind grew calmer instead. However perfect the plan was, it remained a simulation on paper. Whether the underground platform's system vulnerabilities really worked as he judged, and just how much tolerance the clearing module's verification logic allowed, would remain unknown unless he tried it himself.
This platform had run rampant for so long through illegal lending and violent debt collection that someone who knew the business had to be overseeing it behind the scenes. One wrong step would beat the grass and startle the snake.
Chen Fan closed his eyes and regulated his breathing for a moment, suppressing the restless eagerness in his chest.
A cultivator should act like a fierce tiger lying hidden in the forest: thunderous in motion, still as a deep pool at rest.
His first task was not to rush into making money, but to toss out a stone to test the path and gauge the depths of this pool himself.
Half an incense stick later, he opened the Spirit Network again. Rather than infiltrating the backend, he followed a publicly accessible gray-market link to Treasure-Gathering Spirit Loans' frontend borrowing page.
This time, he used his official Spirit Coins account linked to his Jingfu University student registration throughout the process. Real-name verification, facial verification, student status authentication-he skipped nothing, leaving it clean of even the slightest trickery.
In an illegal lending platform's risk-control system, anonymous accounts that concealed their identities were precisely the ones singled out for scrutiny. An enrolled student cultivator with a clear, verifiable background, however, meant a stable source of repayments and an extremely low risk of bad debt. Such students were their favorite high-quality prey, unlikely to arouse suspicion.
Chen Fan slowly swiped through the loan terms, deliberately appearing to read every word. In reality, his gaze swept over the trap-laden clauses: thirty percent deducted upfront as interest, fifty percent interest for a seven-day loan, a ten-percent daily penalty for overdue payments, and additional compensation for so-called "debt collection service fees" upon default. Every clause crossed the red lines of the Immortal Palace's financial prohibitions-an utterly naked usury scheme.
He sneered inwardly, but his hands never stopped. Following a novice borrower's normal pace, he completed the application: a loan of six thousand Spirit Coins, a seven-day term, and "purchasing cultivation consumables" listed as its purpose.
Six thousand Spirit Coins was neither too much nor too little, just the amount a low-level student cultivator might need for an emergency. It was neither small enough for the platform to ignore nor large enough to trigger additional review.
And his real purpose had never been borrowing money, but repaying it.
Less than half an incense stick after he submitted the application, a notification appeared confirming successful disbursement.
Of the six thousand Spirit Coins in principal, eighteen hundred were deducted as "service fees" and a "security deposit," leaving an actual payout of forty-two hundred Spirit Coins.
This was the industry's notorious upfront interest deduction: borrow six thousand, receive forty-two hundred, yet repay six thousand in principal plus interest seven days later. The annualized rate was outrageously high.
Chen Fan looked at the amount credited without expression. It was exactly as he had predicted-a standard predatory online lending scheme.
He left those forty-two hundred Spirit Coins untouched. Instead, he transferred five thousand Spirit Coins from his own account directly into the dedicated repayment account supplied by the platform, with the note "early partial repayment."
These five thousand Spirit Coins were the actual stone he had tossed out to test the path.
He had never intended to profit from the difference by borrowing money. He did not even care how much of those five thousand Spirit Coins the platform would deduct in penalties and interest.
What he wanted was to go through a real repayment process from beginning to end, seeing for himself how the system recorded the money after it entered the platform, how the clearing module verified it, how long it took to synchronize with the user's bill, and whether the core database performed real-time verification.
Only after he thoroughly understood these details could his subsequent plan to fabricate excess repayments and obtain refunds truly be put into practice.
Chen Fan exercised particular restraint throughout the process.
He used no tricks to speed things up and altered no data. Like an ordinary student, he spent ages studying the repayment interface before clumsily completing the transfer.
After transferring the money, he repeatedly refreshed the billing page, occasionally opening "repayment details" and "outstanding balance" to check for changes.
He spent nearly two full hours at it. Only after confirming that the amount repaid had updated on the bill and the outstanding balance had decreased accordingly did he exit the platform, as though breathing a sigh of relief.
Before leaving, he did just one thing: use the most basic Spirit Network cache-cleaning tool to erase his local activity traces. It was neither sophisticated nor conspicuous, merely a routine operation any ordinary cultivator would use. Done in just the right measure, it was all the less likely to arouse suspicion.
Once everything was done, Chen Fan leaned back in his chair, took out talisman paper and a pen, and began reviewing every detail of what had just happened.
The repayment took half an hour to arrive, and the bill updated fifteen minutes after the funds arrived. The clearing module only checked that the repayment account matched the borrowing account, without querying the core database to verify the transaction's authenticity; the early repayment penalty was calculated automatically by the frontend system, with no manual review on the backend.
As he recorded each detail, Chen Fan's eyes grew brighter and brighter.
It matched his deductions without the slightest deviation.
Because the platform operated illegally, it dared not connect to the Immortal Palace's official clearing interface and relied entirely on its own rudimentary system to reconcile accounts. To save on manpower and speed up lending and repayment, its peripheral clearing module used extremely crude verification logic. Astonishingly, the user information database and core database did not synchronize in real time, but reconciled accounts in a single batch each day during the hour of the Ox.
This meant that before the daily reconciliation, he only needed to plant a repayment record in the user information database for the clearing module to assume the transaction genuinely existed.
His plan was viable.
Immediately afterward, he spent another thirty thousand Spirit Coins conducting further tests in batches.
Thirty thousand Spirit Coins in exchange for precise system data and hard proof of the vulnerability-this deal was worth it.
Chen Fan's fingertips brushed over the records on the talisman paper. He had already settled on the best time to act: one hour before the reconciliation during the hour of the Ox two days later.
By then, the entire day's transaction records would have flowed into the clearing module. With the data volume at its greatest and the system at its busiest, a modest "refund for excess repayment" mixed in among them would have the easiest time slipping through.
Even if an anomaly surfaced during subsequent reconciliation, it would only be treated as a system calculation error or an internal bookkeeping mistake.
He folded the talisman paper covered in records and put it into the deepest part of his Storage Bag.
Now everything was ready; he only needed to wait for the right moment. As for the loss of those thirty thousand Spirit Coins, he did not take it to heart at all.
Once he succeeded, he would take back both principal and interest from their pool of funds, several times over.
While all remained calm on Chen Fan's end, countless light-years away in the Immortal Palace's main city, the repayment of those thirty thousand Spirit Coins sent ripples through the General Finance Bureau's Illegal Finance Monitoring Center.
Cold light flowed through the monitoring hall, where hundreds of light screens displayed countless hidden channels of funds. As an illegal lending platform under priority surveillance, Treasure-Gathering Spirit Loans had every incoming and outgoing transaction in its pool of funds automatically recorded and archived by the system.
The inspector assigned to this operation was casually scanning the transactions when several repayments totaling thirty thousand Spirit Coins passed before his eyes. He was about to swipe past them, but caught sight of the paying account's registered identity out of the corner of his eye, and his hand stopped short.
Payer: Chen Fan.
Identity: student jointly trained by Handong University and Jingfu University. Advisor: Jiang Qingyuan.
The inspector's heart gave a jolt, and he immediately called over the supervisor, Liu Feng.
Liu Feng hurried over and stared at the light screen for a full half minute, his brows drawing ever tighter.
He had worked in financial regulation for decades and knew better than anyone who Jiang Qingyuan was: an incorruptible Heaven-Rank Envoy of the Law Enforcement Immortal Hall. She had once led crackdowns on three waves of underground banks and illegal lending rings, exposing at least eight or ten illicit platforms herself.
And her student was actually making repayments to a loan-sharking platform like Treasure-Gathering Spirit Loans?
"Pull up every activity record for this account," Liu Feng said gravely.
The data was quickly retrieved: registration that day, six thousand borrowed that day, and five thousand repaid early that day. The activity trail was slow and awkward, looking every bit like a novice's. He even seemed not to have understood the rules for the upfront interest deduction.
The more "normal" it looked, the more Liu Feng felt something was wrong.
Would her student foolishly jump into such an obvious trap? And deliberately repay early to hand them interest?
Had the student secretly borrowed emergency money without his teacher's knowledge? Or... was the wine not what the drinker was really after?
Could the Law Enforcement Immortal Hall be moving ahead of schedule? That was against procedure! There was no documented work trail! They had not even given advance notice!
"No." Liu Feng shook his head and pondered with a frown, pointing at the records. "Look at the timing of his repayment. It was exactly half an hour before the platform's clearing batch that day. A repayment made then would only enter the pending clearing queue, without immediately synchronizing to the core database. What ordinary borrower would time it like that?"
The inspector froze. "You mean... he did it deliberately?"
"It's too early to say." Liu Feng considered for a moment, then made an immediate decision. "Place this account under level-one monitoring at once. Spirit Network login IP, account fund movements, platform activity records-watch them around the clock. Also, trace the complete flow of this repayment and see whether there were any abnormal diversions."
"Yes!"
As the order went out, a red priority marker immediately appeared on the light screen, and Chen Fan's student account was firmly locked into the monitoring grid.
Liu Feng stood before the light screen, lightly tapping his fingertips against the console.
A genius student from Handong University, Jiang Qingyuan's prized pupil, had quietly slipped into a loan-sharking platform under their priority surveillance and made a repayment precisely at a clearing checkpoint.
There was no way this was a coincidence.
"Compile an encrypted briefing and report it to the general office immediately," Liu Feng instructed gravely. "Say we have detected that Professor Jiang Qingyuan's student, Chen Fan, is suspected of involvement with the Treasure-Gathering Spirit Loans platform. His purpose is unknown, and we request instructions from our superiors."